Doing your own """""research""""" without having the knowledge to critically think about what you're reading, to critically evaluate the data collection and statistics and limitations of the dataset is NOT true research. Instead, what you're doing most of the time is finding the articles that already confirm the biases you have in your head. It's hard to completely avoid confirmation bias because we're all human, but without the tools to ask the right questions in good faith, some are a lot more prone to it than others.

I've spent about 5 years total in two different [actual] research labs. Do you know how long it took me to grasp the basic literature review that is required to form an understanding of the field I'm in? Everyone's different, but for your reference it took me over a year of reading and re-reading papers to synthesize a comprehensive picture of things. And that's just the picture I needed to get started in the field. Every paper I read after that required me to adjust my understanding of things yet again. And that's WITH assistance and insight from other trained scientists.

So I think it's silly when people decide to go based off of their own """research.""" Sure, you can question the authorities and experts in the field, but be prepared to hear their answer because it took them years of work to develop that answer.

Sean nailed it.

I'm completely making this up, but people who know what is going on and complex scientific articles are at the top of the information chain. Worst case scenario, the information will trickle down to simple folks, like me, through many actors, whose interests will shape or even mislead and completely distort it (conspiracy theories). And some people will believe that false information instead of one that came almost directly from the top (like trusted news agencies), because understanding and tracking the origins of false information is difficult, as people probably aren't experts and don't have time/resources for that.

Covid is new for the 'experts' too, they don't really know what is going to happen - remember when vaccinated people didn't need masks anymore last summer? They really don't help themselves when they bend the knee for politicians and corporations - the CDC cut its 10-day quarantine to 5 days (in the middle of an omicron variant surge) and then places like Delta Airlines immediately slashed their sick benefits in half, that kind of shit is how conspiracies get born, our leaders do this to us all the time, systemically fail miserably and blame bad outcomes on individuals, like anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists - worse, the masses pick up that talking point and blame individuals too, ya'll please start being mad at systems and leaders, not the guy ranting online about chemtrails